 The Watts Prophets The 1970 LP by the Watts Prophets is a vital document of the Black Arts movement, raw and real, and in many ways still relevant today. Listening in the 00s, you can't help but compare the poetry on this album to some of the most challenging hip-hop material out there, yet it's even tougher than most hip-hop I know, far less calculated and almost certainly created with no potential white audience in mind. The Prophets (Amde Hamilton, Odie Hawkins, Ed Bereal, Emmery Lee Joseph Evans, Jr.) are accompanied by sparse percussion and occasional saxophone, but it's the words that provide the music. It's the music of anger and of pride, and while a lot of it seems a bit naïve or rough-hewn ("Black Pussy" comes to mind), it's impossible to deny the power that is harnessed between the offerings of these previously unknown voices. There is wisdom, a lot of unfocussed anger, and a lot of beauty in these lines. It's easy to describe this album as a pioneering release in the development of rap music, and it goes without saying that On the Street in Watts is a heavily sampled source. It's more difficult to appreciate the album in its original form. Challenging and inspiring, it's an album that demands your full attention, and whips your brain around until you're really thinking, brother. Some of the more transcendent poems are "Funny How Things Can Change" (brilliant wordplay that turns into a great statement of black pride), "They Shot Him," "Falstaff" (which namechecks Donald Byrd), "The Days, the Hours" (which is the most personal, emotional cut on the record. "I'll Stop Calling You Niggers" is a companion to Gil Scott-Heron's "Brother," albeit much more of a "street" take on the concept of "black man" vs. "nigger." "Things Gonna Get Greater Later" is like an angrier "Revolution Will Not Be Televised," calling for much more of an immediate revolution than ol' Gil probably envisioned. The poets are neither patient nor complacent, all of them having seen the riots in Watts firsthand and not interested in pie in the sky. Gil's albums are overall a better listen, but it's hard to write off the powerful messages on the Watts Prophets album. This is a great album for anyone remotely interested in Black Arts poetry, or African-American history at all, actually, an important document, with no overstatement. The fact that not everything on here is polished (some lines are swagger over substance – "The meek ain't gonna inherit SHIT/'Cause I'll take it!") makes it a credible representation of the frustration and potential explosiveness of the community these poets speak from. Like most spoken word albums, this isn't one you'll sit down and listen to a whole lot, but it is an amazing album. The CD was apparently mastered from an LP, as there are audible surface pops and clicks and the "full frequency range" is about that of my sister's Fisher-Price turntable from 1978. But then this is not a disc for audiophiles, clearly.
Review by Gretchen Poopstain |